Former Nigerian President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan Monday spoke at the Oxford Union, succeeding US Secretary of State, John Kerry, who spoke at the same event in May this year.Speaking on the theme 'Fostering Youth Entrepreneurship, Dr. Jonathan, whose speech was streamed live, said:"I once said that I was not elected President of Nigeria to spread poverty, I was elected to generate and spread wealth." 'My belief in this regard is that getting a job or being a worker cannot completely cure the disease of poverty. It is only your own business that can providesuch security and give you the financial freedom you need to prosper."Dr. Jonathan asked the esteemed audience some questions during his speech which included;"Why are some nations rich and some poor?Why do individuals that grow up in similar circumstances end up differently, with some as successes and others as failures?Is the wealth of nations a result of geography, weather, culture, destiny, etc.?What could a leader do to effectively lift a people out of the depths of poverty, and enable them to achieve prosperity?"The former Nigerian leader talked about youth entrepreneurship programs his administration pioneered saying that one of them, YouWIN was a major plank of his job creation efforts."The motivation for this program is for young people to go into SMEs, create jobs for other young people with the expectation that some would grow to largescale businesses" Dr. Jonathan said.The former President concluded his speech by giving a short brief of his achievements in the economic sphere, saying:"Under my watch, Nigeria was projected byCNN Money to be the third fastest growingeconomy in the world for the year 2015 and rated as the largest economy in Africa and the 23rd largest in the world by the World Bank and the IMF, with a GDP above half a Trillion US dollars."The speech was streamed live via Dr. Jonathan's Facebook page and will be hosted on the Oxford Union's site.
Previous speakers at the Oxford Union include the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, author of 48 laws of power, Robert Greene, the Dalai Lama, former British prime ministers Winston Churchill, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Mother Teresa and former US presidents Richard Nixon (November 1978), Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton.